
AN 

ERICAN 
VIEW 



OF THE 



TRANSVAAL 
QUESTION 



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...BY... 

ROBERT HUTCHESON, Esq. 



Price, 10 Cents 



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Addresjs all conimunication rrning this pamplilet 

to the President, British-Amerioan A88oeiation, in care of 
A. H. Smythk, Bookfieller and Stationer, 43 South High 
Street, Columbus, OHio. 



Tract No. l—June, 1900. 



''^ Happy is he -who U7iderstands the causes of th{7igsy — Cicero, 



The Truth 

About 
The South African Question 



BY 



R. HUTCHESON, ESQ. 

Of the District Bar ; Late Ohio State Senator. 



Washino:ton, D. C, April 25, 1900. 



D.TTL. 



\5 

'3> ^ 



The Truth 

About the South African 
Question 



Mr. Webster Davis, of Kansas City, late Assistant Secretary 
of the Interior, has just returned from a visit to the scene of 
hostilities in South Africa, and has taken to the lecture platform 
to tell the American people what their duties are in the British- 
Boer war. He thunders considerably in the index, but whether 
the execution of his self-appointed task shall keep pace with the 
vigor of his pronunciamento, which has not always been the case 
in adventures of this kind, remains to be seen. 

In the laughable comedy of Thisby and Pyramus it was 
thought necessary to give assurance to timid ladies in the au- 
dience that there was no live lion on the stage with veritable 
teeth and claws, the prologue telling them plainly that what 
appeared to be a lion was not a lion, but only "Snug, the 
joiner," a ''man as other men are."' The most superficial ob- 
server in pit or proscenium in Mr. Davis' Opera House gather- 
ings will not be deceived concerning the true nature of the ex- 
hibition without a prologue to announce it ! 

"The knight of the sorrowful figure" started out from his 



4 The Truth About the South Africaji Question 

native village to tackle wind-mills with pretty much the same 
views and feelings as the late "spell-binder" enters his career 
of knight-errantry. He claps a barber's basin on his head, be- 
lieving it to be Mambrino's helmet, mounts his oratorical Pe- 
gasus and sails into John Bull with all the dash and daring of 
his renowned archetype. He also carries a lance at rest for 
William McKinley, if he fails to be convinced of his duty and 
refuses to send the army and navy to the assistance of the 
Boers. Pity our modern Don Quixote has no faithful squire 
like Sancho Panza to disillusion his mad master and to in- 
struct the world with his apt proverbs, such as ''Fast bind, fast 
find; less talking and more doing; for he who shuffles is not 
he who cuts, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." 
"Many think to find bacon, when there is not so much as a pin 
to hang it on ; but who can hedge in the cuckoo — especially 
as God himself is not spared." "He who seeketh danger per- 
isheth therein," and so on in exhaustless streams of practical 
wisdom. He says he has resigned the snug position he held 
in order that he might not be embarrassed with the popular sup- 
position that he was speaking for or representing the Admin- 
istration which he helped bring into power by his persuasive 
eloquence, and to which he is indebted for distinguished favor. 
It seems to me this was a work of supererogation. It carries no 
evidence that either President McKinley or Secretary Hay ever 
entertained the slightest idea of making Mr. Davis their organ 
of public policy on this subject or any other, in office or out of 
office, and the public credulity must be inconceivable that will 



I 



The Truth About the South African Question, i^ 

suppose for a moment that in what he has to say he will reflect 
the sentiments of either the President or his Secretary. It 
must occur, however, to the most enthusiastic admirer of the 
Kansas City orator, if not to his own sense of propriety, that 
it would have been more ingenuous in him to resign before mak- 
ing the visit to equip himself for his wordy campaign against 
Great Britain in this country. The Courts of Europe did sup- 
pose that, occupying the position of Assistant Secretary of an 
important Department of the Government, Mr. Davis must 
have gone to South Africa in some official capacity. Nothing 
of the sort existed, and no embarrassment came to the Gov- 
ernment in connection with it. There was a difference between 
Davis and ]\Iacrum. The consul to Pretoria fled from fright 
and tried to unload upon his Democratic admirers a cock-and- 
bull story about British interference with his mails. The re- 
doubtable "spell-binder'' loves the "pomp and circumstance of 
glorious war," and had no objection to bullets if they only came 
from Boer Mausers and brought down the Britishers. 

The walls of Jericho tumbled down before the blasts of a 
ram's horn — this was in an age of miracles — but in these days 
things go along in a natural way — and we will probably not 
behold the Administration go down nor the British Empire col- 
lapse before the elocutionary performance of this wonderful 
prodigy from Missouri ! 

In his opening lecture the other evening in this city, Mr. 
Davis does not appear to make any valuable contribution to 
the Boer cause. He draws on his imagination for his facts of 



6 The Truth About the South African ^uestio?i. 

history and employs declamation for argmiient. Commonplace 
platitudes are his postulates and rounded periods his conclusions. 
Mr. Davis says the article in the agreement of 1881 as to 
suzerainty was eliminated in the Convention of 1884. He says 
England took sides with the Basutos in their war against the 
Boers. Why, if England had not sent the red coats to the 
rescue the Boers would have been wiped from the face of the 
earth. Such gross errors and misinformation show what value 
should attach to any of his statements. He evidently gets his 
facts and his ideas of the British-Boer question while hob- 
nobbing with Kruger, Steyn and Reitz while at their capitals 
or traveling in their luxurious private cars in which he made 
discoveries as remarkable as those of the famous Gulliver in his 
travels. British statesmen and soldiers are all of Lilliputian 
proportions, while those of the Boers are decidedly Brob- 
dignagian. His attempt to get the truth from Oom Paul is about 
as amusing as the discovery of Gulliver at the Academy of La- 
gado, where he found a professor at work on a process he 
claimed to have invented to extract sunbeams from cucumbers ! 
Caesar wrote the immortal words, ''I came, I saw, I conquered." 
Webster Davis declares. "I came, I saw and I know it all," a 
greater achievement than that of the great Roman. 

As citizens of the world — especially since we have become 
one of the first of world-powers — the people of the United 
States will have opinions on the merits of public wars or other 
questions affecting the relation of nations to us or to each 
other — but until a crisis is reached which calls for interference, 



The Truth About the South African Question, 7 

it is a breach of national etiquette for any citizen, high or low, 
to attempt to array our people in favor of one and against an- 
other of two belligerents. If Mr. Davis' talk should develop into 
action by any of his deluded followers, he and they would be 
liable to arrest for violation of our neutrality laws. It is nat- 
ural and excusable for our hyphenated fellow-citizens to sym- 
pathize with the cause of the fatherland, right or wrong, or with 
their countrymen in revolted colonies — but their allegiance as 
alien subjects has been forsworn when they take sides as active 
partizans. They have no moral right to espouse the cause of an- 
other people which might compromise their adopted country. 

Talk about foreign "entanglements." It could take no worse 
shape than for our citizens — native or foreign-born — to unite 
and divide for party purposes on the affairs of outside nations. 
For writing a letter to a former British subject a few years 
ago advising him how to vote in a presidential election, a 
British Minister had to quit the country. But the Anglo-Amer- 
ican citizen himself would not have been justified if he had voted, 
or persuaded other citizens of British birth to vote in the sup- 
posed interest of Great Britain. Such a policy might lead to the 
total absorption of one country by another, or foment faction 
and civil war. 

Our people naturally and properly sympathize with the 
struggles for liberty the world over. It was so in the South 
American struggle to throw off the Spanish yoke — it was so 
when Henry Clay in 1824 raised his eloquent voice in the senate 
in behalf of Greece against the Turks — it was so when Kos- 



8 The Truth About the South Africaft Question. 

suth came to our shores to plead the cause of the brave Magyars 
against the despotism of Austria — and the last evidence of it 
was when we compelled Spain to retire from Cuba — but in 
all these cases our path of duty was clear. 

The Boers in the so-called Dutch republics are not at all in 
the same category, as I shall endeavor to show. 

It is a pitiful spectacle to see a few thousand misguided 
Boers pitted against an empire of millions, but if a great Empire 
has rights and interests to defend against an unjustifiable re- 
volt, who is to blame? 

On the 9th of October, 1899, the Boer government issued 
its ultimatum to Great Britain, which was tantamount to a de- 
claration of war, and the Boers immediately invaded British 
territory. The civilized world must therefore hold them responsi- 
ble for the commencement of the war, and for its terrible train of 
consequences. What could England do but accept the gage 
thrown down? 

In March, 1899, 21,000 British subjects in the Transvaal 
had petitioned the home government for protection against the 
spoliation and tyranny of the Boer government — "to secure 
the speedy reform of abuses complained of, and to obtain sub- 
stantial guarantees for a recognition of their rights as British 
subjects." If a Power like England had turned a deaf ear to 
the just complaints of so large a number of her subjects, she 
would have received and deserved the contempt of mankind. The 
Union Jack would have floated over a nation of cowards. Their 
dead heroes would have turned in their graves ! 



The Truth About the South African ^uestioti. 9 

It is natural to sympathize with the "under dog," but it is 
often proper to consider how the "under dog" got into that 
particular predicament. If a big mastiff turns upon his smaller 
tormentor — always snapping at his heels, and even seeking to 
drive him off his own grounds by a conspiracy with other dogs 

— the edge is considerably knocked off the sympathy ! 

Seriously, the strong common sense of the American people 
begins to detect the humbug of this false plea of "liberty" for 
the Boer — common sense, I say — which, according to the hu- 
morous Senator from Alabama, is the first thing your genuine 
orator discards. 

As I view the subject interest and sentiment both unite to 
direct the sympathies of the American people to the side of Great 
Britain, not to that of the Boers, in the war. now going on in 
South Africa. 

The success of British arms, of which I think there is no 
doubt, means the ultimate consolidation of the Transvaal and 
Natal countries from the Zambesi to the Cape — something like 
the Dominion of Canada — and this will mean widening markets 
for our expanding commerce : it will mean a railroad from the 
Cape to Cairo, more sale of steel bridges, locomotives and 
rolling stock — more demand for the inexhaustible products of 
our farms and manufactories. English defeat will mean the 
relapse of that portion of the "Dark Continent" into barbar- 
ism — the closing of the doors that have been opened to trade 

— setting back the hands on the clock of progress. It is not a 
time to look with indifference to such a prospect when all eyes 



lO The Trtith About the South Africa7i Question. 

are now turned to the magnificent possibilities of our commerce 
in other lands than Africa. 

As to the principle involved, the conditions are just the re- 
verse of what the pro-Boer agitators are trying to make the 
people believe. On the part of England it is a war of Democ- 
racy against Oligarchy — a war of freedom against tryanny. On 
the part of the Beors, it is a war to impose taxation without 
representation and to deny freedom and equality to all men. 

Strange to say, Kruger and his advisers stand to-day where 
George III and Lord North stood in 1776, while Great Britain 
stands where the patriots of the Revolution stood when they 
demanded that taxation and representation should go together. 

In numbers, as I learn from reliable statistics, the Uit- 
landers constitute about three-fourths of the population of the 
Transvaal, and although they pay nine-tenths of the taxes of 
the country, they have no voice or share in the government. 
About 90 per cent, of these people are British subjects, mostly 
attracted, it is probably true, by the rich gold fields in the 
Rand, but thoroughly identified with the country as property 
holders, and otherwise. The term applied to them by the Boers 
means "foreigner," but "newcomer" would be a more accurate 
description. At any rate they are British subjects, entitled to 
all the rights and privileges enjo3^ed by natives; and all the 
"Conventions" between Great Britain and the Boer govern- 
ment secured them these rights, but these agreements have been 
wantonly disregarded. 

Such a thing as freedom of the press does not exist. Under 



The Truth About the South Africa?! ^2iestio7i. ii 

existing laws the President of the South African Republic can, 
with the consent of his Council, forbid the circulation of any 
printed matter; and at his discretion he can prohibit the cir- 
culation of an}- newspaper he chooses to suppress. Public meet- 
ings can be held onh^ with the sanction of the Government, and 
may be broken up by order of the police under authority of law. 
They have religious tests — Roman Catholics are excluded from 
offices of all kinds. 

Corruption and bribery run riot in the administration of 
public affairs — between 1883 and 1898 the debates in the Volks- 
raad show that on advances to officials there is no less than 
$11,400,(»00 unaccounted for. The Secret Service fund in 1898 
amounted to |99,000, an amount far in excess of the British 
Imperial estimates. 

From 188(i, when Uitlanders began to come in numbers, to 
1899, the budgets show that the salary list has increased from 
about 52,000 pounds sterling to about 1,216,000; that is to say, 
twent\^-four times larger in thirteen years ! Members of the 
Volksraad are notoriously bought to grant concessions of all 
kinds : which has resulted in the most grievous monopolies ; the 
principal of which is the Netherlands Railway Company — owned 
b}^ a SA^ndicate of Holland and German capitalists — the tariff 
rates putting a burden upon shippers and travellers without par- 
allel for extortion. Next to this is the dynamite monopoly ex- 
torting from the mine operators $3,000,000 annually — the dif- 
ference between the import price and duty and the price paid 
the monopolists. Then everything else of indispensable use by 



12 The Truth About the South African Question. 

the Uitlanders is the subject of a "concession" — matches, paper, 
chocolate, wool, starch, mineral waters, soap, oils, and many 
other articles mentioned in the Blue Book issued by the Colonial 
Secretary. 

The law prohibits the sale of liquor to natives. But all re- 
striction has been removed to allow rich pickings to Kruger's 
relatives and retainers in the way of "concessions," with the 
result that drunkenness has been the rule on the Rand with the 
inevitable accompaniment of crime and accident. 

The judges are all subservient to the President of the Re- 
public, who can dismiss any judge at pleasure. There is no trial 
by a jury of his peers for the Uitlander. "Pass-laws" for 
colored subjects exist which would have been a disgrace to our 
country in the days of slavery. Police officers can enter houses 
without warrant, which no King of England could ever do, 
and treat people, wdiite and black, wath the grossest brutality 
without accountability. They shot down a British subject in his 
own house at Pretoria for no offiense but defending himself in 
the street against a blackguard. 

Talk about religion and a sense of justice among the Boers. 
Their religion is hypocrisy and their justice is to demand every- 
thing and concede nothing. Cromwell and his Puritans were 
fanatical but they were sincere, and Oom Paul and his so-called 
"farmers" are demonstrative in their religious profession, but 
like Satan quoting Scripture, it is for a devilish purpose. At 
Majuba they fired into ambulances full of the wounded and fly- 
ing the Red Cross ! They released prisoners on foot and then 



The l^ruth About ike South African Question, 13 

shot them down in broad daylight ! The treatment of the con- 
demned "Committee of Reform" in the Pretoria jail after the 
Jameson raid is scarcely inferior in horrors to the Black Hole 
of Calcutta. 

Under the Alien Expulsion Act of 1896, the President had 
power to expel any Uitlander without any trial whatsoever. The 
Alien and Sedition laws of the old Federal party in this 
country, which revolutionized our politics in 1800, and wrecked 
a great political party, were moderate and just compared with 
the Boer law^ The Transvaal government has claimed the right 
in time of war, either to compel the services or seize the prop- 
erty of British subjects, and to levy a special war tax upon them, 
and it can be done under the law as it stands. The English 
language is forbidden in public documents and proceedings. In 
the schools the regulations are such that out of $315,000 raised in 
Johannesburg, only $3, "250 is spent on British children, and no 
grant is made to the voluntary schools, which are some of the 
best in the Transvaal. 

In Johannesburg there are 23,000 Uitlander votes to 1,000 
Boers, and yet the Boers elect an equal number of the mem- 
bers of Council, while the Chairman has to be a Boer, and 
the decisions of the Council are subject to confirmation by the 
Executive. The municipality of Johannesburg, with a population 
of 100,000 has really less power than the old Sanitary Com- 
mittee w^hen it was a mining camp! In 1874 the franchise only 
required one year's residence without real estate. In 1882 five 
years' residence and registration were required. Registration 



1 4 The Truth About the South African Question. 

has become so complicated that it takes fourteen years to obtain 
the franchise, during twelve of which the Uitlander is neither 
a British nor a Boer subject, and the law may be so construed 
as to deny the franchise to any one altogether. Petitions signed 
by 40,000 Uitlanders went up to the Volksraad for redress of 
grievances, but they were "spurned with contempt from the foot 
of the throne." 

All these abuses produced such discontent that the Uit- 
landers formed a ''National Union" at Johannesburg, which 
threatened to fight for its rights. This led to the Jameson raid 
in response to a request by the Uitlanders for aid in 1895, fol- 
lowed by defeat of the raiders and the disarmament of Johan- 
nesburg. It has been said that this raid was instigated by 
British officials. The record proof is that Dr. Jameson was 
warned by the British agent at Pretoria not to make the move. 
But the material thing to consider is, not how the raid orig- 
inated, but the fact that it emphasized a situation that demanded 
intervention. It showed the acute stage of the trouble much 
like Spain's treatment of the Cubans before we intervened. 

Appeals for redress were then made to Sir Alfred Milner, 
Governor of Cape Colony, and High Commissioner for South 
Africa. In reviewing the situation, this officer declared: "The 
case for intervention is overwhelming." Mr. Joseph Chamberlain 
and the English government sustained his view. We interfered 
in Cuba for less reason. The United States has no "suzerainty" 
there, and it requires an extreme case of abuse, under inter- 
national law, to war^rant. the intereference.,of. one Power in the 



The Truth About the South African Question, 15' 

domestic affairs of another. That condition existed in Cuba in 
the opinion of Congress, and if the RepnbHcs of South Africa 
had been independent Powers, which they are not, the situa- 
tion demanded interference by England quite as much as the 
disorders in Cuba required the intervention of our government 
for its own safety and welfare. 

The result of the situation was a meeting between Milner 
and Kruger in May, 1899, at the Capital of the Orange Free 
State. Terms of settlement could not be agreed upon and the 
Boers declared war. 

We will look in vain through Jefferson's arraignment of 
Georsre III for grievances worse than those of the Uitlanders 
at the hands of the Boer government, and yet the Declaration 
of Independence is invoked to condemn England and sustain the 
Boers in this war. 

Why did all attempts to preserve peace prove abortive? It 
was because a conspiracy had been formed imder the name of 
the "Afrikander Bond" to drive the British flag from South 
Africa. Kruger, President of the South African Republic; 
Steyn, President of the Orange Free State; and Reitz, State 
Secretary of the Transvaal, headed this conspiracy. They wanted 
no settlement. Reitz was the brains of the movement, as the 
Tagal leader recently captured in the Philippines was the brains 
to Aguinaldo. This propaganda was started just after the Con- 
vention of 1881. It must be patent to every one that at that 
time England harbored no oppressive designs, for she had just 
granted the independence of the Transvaal for internal affairs 



i6 The Truth About the South African Question, 

— she had no intention of making war on the republics, for she 
had just made peace — no intention of seizing the gold fields 
in the Rand, for they were not yet discovered. Intoxicated by 
Majuba Hill, and believing that the dream of a Pan-Afrikander 
Republic was abort to be realized, Reitz issued a "manifesto'* 
shamelessly chargi; g the Queen of England, the British nation. 
Chamberlain, Miln^r and the British Cabinet with being "mur- 
derers" and "robbers." It must have been a happy day for 
the Transvaal Secretary when he sat down to pen his ultimatum 
a year later to Great Britain which he knew meant war. It 
opened up visions of the future Republic for whicn he had been 
plotting for years. 

Let us get down to the bottom facts in this bloody busi- 
ness in South Africa — apply the law to them — and see where it 
will lead us. In 148(3 — six years before Columbus discovered 
America — Bartholomew Diaz, a Portuguese navigator, sailed 
along the west coast of Africa on a voyage to discover a new 
ocean road to India. He reached a bold headland which he called 
the Cape of "Storms," but which was renamed by King John, 
the Second, the €.^pe of "Good Hope." Other navigators of dif- 
ferent nations followed until 1591, when the Eno-lish flag was 
seen at the Cape for the first time. In 1602 a charter was issued 
at The Hague to the Dutch East India Company. The fleets 
sent out by this Company prevailed over the Portuguese in 
India where they had established themselves, and in the many 
voyages to India the Dutch made a calling station at Table 
Bay on the Cape until, in 1652, they established a colony. In 



The Truth About the South African Question. 17 

1658 they unfortunately introduced slavery. The colony rapidly 
filled up by permanent settlers coming from Holland, including 
the Hugenots, who had fled from France upon the revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes. General Joubert, late Boer commander, 
was a descendant of the Huguenot colonists. The children of 
Dutch gardners, German mechanics, and Huguenot tradesmen, 
migrating from place to place with their herds, sleeping in tents 
or wagons, and free from the restraint of civilized life, reverted 
in habit and thought to the condition of semi-barbarism, which 
grew stronger and stronger with each succeeding generation, 
which at last culminated in their hate for all foreigners. The 
next object of their hatred was the missionaries, who exposed 
their cruelties to the Blacks. 

At the outbreak of the war between England and France 
in 1803, Cape Colony belonged to the Netherlands; but in 1806 
Louis Napoleon was made king of that country and England 
in the same year attacked the Cape as a French possession, and 
the authorities of the Cape capitulated. This was title by con- 
quest. British occupation was made permanent by a Convention 
signed in 1814 between Great Britain after the Dutch had re- 
gained possession, and the Netherlands, by the terms of which 
England paid $30,000,000 for cession of the colony and of other 
Dutch colonies, which now form the colony of British Guiana. 
This was title by conquest and purchase like our title to the 
Phillippines. 

Public sentiment in England would no longer tolerate sla- 
very; and so in May, 1833, the act of emancipation was passed 



1 8 The Truth About the South African Question, 

to free all slaves throughout the British dominions. A compen- 
sation of $100,000,000 was granted to the slaveholders, the grand- 
est and noblest act done by any nation in the history of the 
world. The value of the 40,000 slaves held by the Dutch in the 
Cape was $15,000,000, but the Imperial Government awarded 
only $1,250,000, made payable in London, which worked in- 
convenience and loss, but no greater hardships were put upon 
the colonists in the Cape than in the West Indies. In the end 
emancipation was best for all, as it has been in our own country. 
By the acquisition of Cape Colony from Holland the sov- 
ereignty was transferred to Great Britain and the Dutch colon- 
ists became subjects of the British Crown. The distinction be- 
tween direct "sovereignty," ''protectorates" or "suzerainty" and 
"spheres of influence" has always been recognized. Great Brit- 
ain claimed as falling within her influence, though not within 
the limits of her direct sovereignty, the interior back country 
as well as the coast, south of the 25th degree of South latitude, 
which is the latitude of Delagoa Bay, then, as now, a Portu- 
guese possession. This claim has always been admitted by the 
Powers interested in the occupation of Africa. The Boer emi- 
grants or "trekkers" from Cape Colony were warned by British 
authorities that within the limits of British influence they could 
not divest themselves of their quality as British subjects nor 
establish any form of government other than that of the gov- 
ernment of the British Crown. These warnings will be found 
recorded again and again by official documents. As early as 1836 
Parliament passed an act, called the "Cape of Good Hope Pun- 



The Truth About the South African ^tie'^tion. 19 

ishment Act," by which offences committed by white persons in 
any part of Africa south of latitude 25 degrees were made cog- 
nizable in the Cape colonial courts. 

The relations between the Dutch and the British settlers who 
poured into the Colony towards the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, were not harmonious; and in 1836 large numbers of the 
former "trekked" for the wilderness at the north and east, and 
founded the two colonies of Orange and Natal, whose northern 
boundary was the river Vaal, but they were still claimed as, 
and were in law, British subjects. Upon resisting British au- 
thority they were reduced to submission in 1848, and then a 
large number of them jumped into their wagons and again 
"trekked" across the Vaal, in pursuit of the ignis fatuus of iso- 
lation and independence, about as the Mormons "trekked" from 
the border towns of the West into Utah, establishing the "State 
of Deseret," expecting to escape the jurisdiction of the United 
States for the undisturbed enjoyment of their "peculiar insti- 
tution." They asked to be let alone that they might treat the 
Gentiles as they pleased. A Democratic President sent a little 
army out there to tell them it could not be done and to stop 
their foolishness. The peculiar thing about the Boers was their 
desire to escape the influences of modern civilization and pre- 
serve that of the sixteenth century. 

In their new homes the Boers had a hard experience. They 
maintained a precarious existence by frightful contests with wild 
beasts — Kruger himself is said to have killed 250 lions — the 
fabled Hercules only, killed oae — and. against hordes of hostile 



20 The Truth About the South Africaft Question. 

savage tribes — the Zulus on their east, the Matabeles on their 
west and the Kaffirs in their very midst. The British army went 
to their assistance and it is more than doubtful whether the white 
settlements could have maintained themselves without this aid. 

The colony was in bad financial condition, having less than 
one dollar in the Treasury. England not only furnished soldiers 
to subdue the savages, but furnished the money to pay foreign 
debts and to put the distressed and impoverished colonists on 
their feet again. 

The Boers present a remarkable phenomenon in history. 
The usual result of bringing two races in contact, one en- 
lightened and the other savage, has been to lift up the inferior 
race, but in this case the superior has seemed to sink to the 
level of the inferior. 

They have all the traits of the savage — cunning, suspicion, 
cruelty and treachery. Boer means ''farmer" but in truth these 
people are nomads and hunters. Their implements are the whip 
and the gun more than the hoe and the plow. They never liked 
to work. Their chief complaint against England when they first 
wandered into the wilderness was that she emancipated their 
slaves. 

They make their women perform the drudgery on the 
"farms," and have always more or less evaded the strict 
measures of England to prevent the reduction of the Kaffirs to 
practical slavery by indenture. It was slavery of the cruelest 
kind. They have been known to hitch Kaffirs to their wagons 
to haul heavy loads across the veldt. The reason they can put 



The Truth About the South African Question. 21 

nearly every male, boys and men, into the field, is that they 
are trained to the nse of the gun. They are the best sharp- 
shooters in the world because they are the best hunters. 

They know nothing of the world's advance in the last two 
hundred years and want none of it. The wonderful resources of 
their country was a sealed book to them until developed by out- 
siders. They plastered their rude cabins with blue mud per- 
meated with diamonds and didn't know it, and walked over gold 
beds without seeing them. If England were to withdraw to- 
morrow the result would be about the same as if we should 
withdraw from the Philippines — tribal wars and anarchy and 
ruin — and unless England should return to do her work over 
again — foreign Powers would step in to restore order and di- 
vide the territory among themselves. Originally the Transvaal 
was divided into four little republics at constant war with each 
other for supremacy, until in 1864 Pretorius succeeded in con- 
centrating the power in his own hand like a dictator. But his 
government only existed in name. There was no revenue because 
the Boers refused to pay taxes, and in 1872 it died of inanition. 
Pretorius was succeeded by Pastor Burger, who tried in vain to 
bring order out of chaos. 

In 1877 Great Britain annexed the Transvaal country, not 
as a conquest, or the price of protection, but as the assertion 
of her paramount sovereignty. Burger, the then President 
of the so-called "State of the Transvaal," thus addressed the 
Volksraad on the subject of annexation: 'Tt is asked, what have 
they (the English) got to do with our position. I tell you, as 



22 The Truth About the South African Question. 

much as we have to do with that of our Kaffir neighbors. As 
little as we can allow barbarities among the Kaffirs on our 
border, as little can they allow that in a state on their borders 
anarchy and rebellion should prevail." Kruger himself at that time 
favored annexation and actually took office under the English, 
demanding nothing but an increase of salary until he began 
scheming for the Presidency. He made a successful appeal to 
the irreconcilables and succeded in undermining the influence 
of the enlightened Burger, who wished to lead his people in 
the ways of reform and progress, b}^ accusing him of heresy 
because he did not believe the Devil had a tail, as he is rep- 
resented in the Dutch Bibles ! 

By the first convention of 185'2 the Boers recognized this 
sovereignty in making ternis as to internal government and es- 
tablishing boundaries. Two years later came an analogous agree- 
ment called the Bloemfontein Convention, creating the Orange 
Free State, which got along peaceably and happily until drawn 
into a conspiracy by the Boer leaders to drive Great Britain out 
of South Africa. But the Boers mostly disliked annexation, and 
in 1880 they resorted to arms. They won a great victory at Ma- 
juba Hill, and the British Government was willing to come to 
such terms as would remove irritation and secure peace. By 
a Convention signed at Pretoria, the Capital of the Republic, in 
1881, Gladstone's government restored independence to the Trans- 
vaal, now known officially as the South African Republic. What 
did this mean ? It was expressly stipulated that the English Crown 
should have a veto power over the internal policy of the Re- 



The Truth About the South African Question, 23 

public as to the Kaffirs, and that it should control and con- 
duct its entire foreign policy, except as to the Orange Free 
State, reserving the right to move troops over its territory in 
time of war. 

The Boers continued to chafe more and more under British 
control, although it was a mere shadow of authority, because 
the leaders were secretly w^orking and plotting for absolute in- 
dependence and to oust England from all power in South Africa. 
Gladstone proposed a new convention to adjust differences, when 
there was really no substantial complaint. Then came the Con- 
vention of 1884 at London. Out of deference to Boer sensi- 
tiveness the word "suzerainty'' used in the Convention of 1881 
was omitted, and complete independence was granted in domes- 
tic affairs. Though the word "suzerainty" was dropped, the 
thing itself was asserted in another form. All the foreign 
relations of the Republic w^ere left under the complete control 
of the British government by the right of veto in the Queen. 
Except in name the paramountcy of Great Britain exists over 
the Transvaal as much as over the dominion of Canada, Aus- 
tralia or New Zealand. 

Speaking of the Sand River Convention of 1852 Sir Alichael 
Hicks-Beach has said : 

"The power and authority of England have long been 
paramount and neither by the Sand River Convention of 1852, 
nor at any other time, did Her Majesty's Government surren- 
der the right and duty of requiring that the Transvaal should 
be governed with a vicAv to the common safety of the various 
European communities." 



24 The Truth About the South African Question, 

On the same subject Lord Derby has said: 

"The Sand River Convention, like the Convention of Pre- 
toria, was not a treaty between two contracting Powers, but was 
a declaration made by the Queen, and accepted by certain per- 
sons at that time her subjects, of the conditions under which, 
and the extent to which, Her Majesty could permit them to 
manage their own affairs without interference. It did not create 
a South x\frican Republic, with a political organization and de- 
fined boundaries.' " 

Speaking of the Convention of Pretoria in 1881, Lord Kim- 
berly says : 

''Entire freedom of action will be accorded to the Trans- 
vaal Government, so far as it is not inconsistent with the rights 
expresslv reserved to the Suzerain Power. The term 'Suzer- 
ainty' has been chosen as most conveniently describing superi- 
ority over a state possessing independent rights of government, 
subject to reservations with reference to certain specified mat- 
ters." 

Lord Derby thus describes the London Convention of 1884: 

"The noble Earl (Earl Cadogan) said that the object of the 
Convention had been to abolish the Suzerainty of the British 
Crown. The word 'Suzerainty' is a very vague word, and I do 
not think it is capable of any precise legal definition. What- 
ever we may understand by it, I think it is not very easy to de- 
fine. But I apprehend, whether you call it a Protectorate or a 
Suzerainty, or the recognition of England as a paramount 
Power, the fact is that a certain controlling power is retained 
when the state, which exercises the Suzerainty, has a right to 
veto any negotiations with which the dependent state may enter 



The Truth About the South African Question. 2^ 

with foreign Powers. Whatever Suzerainty meant in the Con- 
vention of Pretoria, the condition of things which it impHed 
still remain; although the word is not actually employed, we 
have kept the substance. We have abstained from using the word 
because it w^as not capable of legal definition and because it 
seemed to be a word which was likely to lead to misconception 
and misunderstanding." 

Mr. Chamberlain, in his dispatches of December, 1898, and 
July, 1899, thus construes the tw^o Conventions of 1881 and 1884: 

''The contention of the Government of the Republic, 'that 
the South African Republic is a Sovereign International State 
is not, in their opinion (?. e., that of Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment), warranted either by law or history, and is wholly in- 
admissible.' The preamble of the Convention of 1881 laid down 
the basis of the future mutual relations between Her Majesty 
and the inhabitants of the South African Republic. To these 
inhabitants Her Majesty granted internal independence. To her- 
self she reserved the position of Suzerain. The Article of the 
Convention of 1881 defined alike the general character of the 
internal independence and the suzerainty. 

"The Article of the Convention of 1884 substituted a fresh 
definition for a former one. The preamble of the Convention 
of 1881, the basis on which these definitions rested, remained 
unchanged. If that preamble had been repealed, not only would 
the reservation of suzerainty on the part of Her Majesty have 
been repealed, but also the grant of internal independence to the 
inhabitants of the South African Republic." 

The "Preamble" to the Convention of 1881 w^as this : 

"Complete self-government subject to the suzerainty of Her 
Majesty, to the inhabitants of the Transvaal territory, upon cer- 



26 The Ti'iifh About the South African ^uestio?t, 

tain terms and conditions, and subject to certain reservations 
and limitations." Any doubt as to the existence of the suzer- 
ainty in the Convention of 1884 is removed by an examination 
of the circumstances under which the Convention of 1884 was 
signed. The Transvaal delegates to London requested the Brit- 
ish Government to do away with the suzerainty by making the 
proposed Convention a treaty between two Powers. This the 
Government refused to do on the ground that the Transvaal was 
not in fact an independent power, nor was it intended that it 
should be represented as such. So the issue was definitely raised 
by the Boers themselves before the Convention was signed, and 
decided against them. 

When Gladstone came in on the wave of ''Little England''' 
sentimentality to succeed Beaconsfield, the Boers confidently 
expected that the annexation of 1877 would be annulled and 
the suzerainty abandoned. But they soon found that the Glad^ 
stone in opposition was not the same person as the Gladstone 
in office, and when Kruger and his advisers asked him to 
carry out the policy he had announced in his public speeches, 
the new Premier sent the following dispatch : 

"Under no circumstances can the Queen's authority in the 
Transvaal be relinquished. Looking to all the circumstances, 
both of the Transvaal and the rest of South Africa, and to the 
necessity of preventing a renewal of disorders which might lead 
to disastrous consequences, not only to the Transvaal, but to 
the whole of South Africa, our judgment is that the Queen 
cannot be advised to relinquish her sovereignty over the Trans- 
vaal." 



The Truth About the South African Question. 27 

On the 20th of May, 1880, the Queen, in her speech an- 
nouncing the policy of the new Government, declared: "In 
maintaining my supremacy over the Transvaal, with its diversified 
population, I desire both to make provision for the security 
of the indigenous races and to extend to the European settlers 
institutions on large and liberal principles of self-government." 
But Gladstone had sown the wind and the whirlwind was not 
far off. 

Of course the Boers have what is called the ''right of rev- 
olution'' — which is no right at all unless successful — and with- 
out giving any reason, they may throw off the power of British 
suzerainty, and so has Great Britain the right to put down re- 
bellion against her authority. This is the law of the case, and 
until these people show themselves more worthy of independence 
it is idle to waste any sentiment on them. ''The tools to them 
that can use them," said the Great Napoleoen. Our Fathers 
were familiar with the tools of liberty, and succeeded in 1770 
because they deserved success. The Boers will fail because they 
have shown themselves unworthy of independence or liberty. 
The people to the north of us enjoy the freedom of British 
subjects, and if they wanted mdependence and should give ex- 
pression to public opinion to that effect in any authoritative 
manner — England, m my opinion, would not send a single 
soldier to prevent it. The same thing may be said of Aus- 
tralia, and even in India if the time should ever come when the 
natives could be entrusted with the responsibilities of self-gov- 
ernment, they can have independence of the British Crown. 



28 TJie Truth About the South Afrizaii Question. 

Our Deople admire the courage and heroism with which the 
Boers fight, but they cannot avoid asking the question, What 
is it for? To accomplish three things : To perpetuate the Kruger 
OHgarchy, rob the foreigners, and enslave the Blacks. 

The great nations which rule the world will ask, What is 
the use of the Dutch Republics if these are the principles they 
represent, and if this is their useiulness? And what interest 
have we in preserving their independent political life, if they 
are only obstacles in the path of civilization? 

On the other hand, the prospect is better for the Boers if 
they fail than if they succeed. As an integral part of the British 
Empire, with a large measure of autonomy — with truly rep- 
resentative government — an uncorrupted judiciary — with ade- 
quate police, schools, railroads and those liberal institutions 
which make British colonies like the Cape the freest countries 
in the world, their condition will be much better. 

Both the conventions of 1881 and 188^4: were sad mistakes 
in British statesmanship. Instead of applying cataplasms of words 
to cover a sore, it should have been cauterized by heroic treat- 
ment. This war was inevitable and should have been fought 
twenty years ago! Gladstone was a great man, but he was 
soft and vacillating. He blundered in Ireland when he refused 
to listen to the just complaints of that unfortunate island, but 
he lived to correct his false views and helped to do a tardy 
act of justice, and were he living to-day he would see his mis- 
take in his colonial policy. When affairs reach a crisis like that 
in South Africa it is only war can make peace. 



TJie Ti'iith About the Sout/i Africa?! ^ne'^tion. 29 

Yellow journalism in England drove Robert Cecil to suicide 
on false charges, and maudlin sentimentalism sought the im- 
peachment of Warren Hastings for alleged wrong-doing in India, 
but the judgment of Englishmen is at last just, and both the 
great English Viceroys stand vindicated. The same influences 
swept the British cabinet from its feet in 1884. Cecil Rhodes 
was right. What England wanted was more iron and less senti- 
ment in its South African policy. The Midlothian electorate had 
the "conscience," but Kruger carried off the plunder! 

It is said England is actuated by greed. The gold fields have 
been of infinitely more advantage to the Boers than to Great 
Britain. The wealth drained from them has enabled the Boer 
Republics to become military Powers far out of proportion to 
their population. They have organized armies — equipped them 
with modern guns — constructed roads and built fortifications. 
The disasters they have inflicted upon the British, and the vic- 
tories they have won are all due to the gold fields. But sup- 
pose greed w^as the motive, what of it? Greed has been the 
animating principle of all the branches of the great Teutonic 
stock since its history began. It is not the same as it was in the 
days of Hengist and Horsa — nor the same that characterized the 
invasions of the Danes and the Saxons — in modern times it 
has been restrained by justice and tempered by "benevolent as- 
similation." It is better that the springs of human progress 
should be moved by avarice and selfishness than they should 
not be moved at all. It was greed that took Canada away from 
the French — a little enterprise in which our liberty-loving an- 



30 The Truth About the South African Question. 

cestors played no small part — but who would now exchange the 
activity of our progressive Anglo-Saxon neighbors at the north 
for the slow methods of the Latin race? And what have we 
been doing on our own hook since that time? Louisiana Pur- 
chase, Florida, Texas, California, and the other territories ac- 
quired from Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico, the Philip- 
pines, and most probably Cuba, Guam, the best part of the Sa- 
moan group, have all been taken in — not by conquest it is 
true — but it would require a pretty fine political alembic to 
determine the exact proportions of ''greed" and ''humanity" in 
the acquiring motive. In view of all this history — and it is only 
our first hundred years — it comes with a bad grace from as 
to upbraid England for her ''greed ;" and in view of her noble 
attitude in the late war with Spain when we were confronted with 
serious complications abroad, it is positively indecent for any 
portion of our people to attempt to throw obstacles in her path 
now that her trial has come. 

If the Dutch East India Company had not raised the price 
of pepper on the London merchants in the seventeenth century, 
no rival company would probably been started in England to 
raise its own pepper, and thus lay the foundation of British 
empire in Asia ! If Egypt had not defaulted to British bond- 
holders, we never would have heard of Omdurman, nor the 
expulsion of the dervishes from the Soudan — and the land of 
the Pharaohs might now be rejoicing in a new life from Fa- 
shoda to the minarets of Cairo. English shot and shell battered 
down the gates of China in 1842, and if opium went in, so did 



The Truth About the South African Question. 31 

the missionary, the church, the school, the factory and the rail- 
road. We applaud our able and patriotic Secretary of State for 
his brilliant diplomacy in securing from the Powers interested 
in the future of China a guaranty of the *'open door" for our 
expanding commerce in the far East. But it must not be for- 
gotten that it was England alone that w:as first to formulate , 
more than half a century ago, that broad and just principle 
of international dealing in the Celestial Empire which made this 
grand result possible. In India she has given the world a suc- 
cessful example of colonial policy for inferior races and warring" 
religions by uniting the Hindoo and the Mohammedan in the 
same peaceful and progressive government, rejoicing in the re- 
naissance of the Aryan race at the very cradle of its origin, 
England is now in South Africa — as we are in the Philippines 
— not as a robber or tyrant — but as the standard-bearer of 
civilization to dispense the blessings of liberty with law — and 
neither we nor our Anglo-Saxon cousins will run away from 
a duty enjoined by destiny! 



NOV 1O190Q 



The Following Books 

recommended for the careful perusal of all 
who are interested in the History of the 
Transvaal, and of the Briton-Boer Conflict. 

The Truth About the Transvaal, 

By William Robins. Price, 25c. 

'Great Britain and the Dutch Republics. 

Price, 10 cents. 



The Transvaal Trouble. 

Hy John Martineau. Price, 75 cents. 

The Truth About the South African 

Question. 

By R. HUTCHESON, Esq. Price, 10c. 

The Transvaal Trouble. 

By John Hays Hammond. Price, 25 cents. 

The AboNe »»riccv ..r, all Postpaid. 



Copies of the above can be obtained of 

A. H. SMYTHE, 
Bookseller and Importer, 

Neil House Block, COLUMBUS, OHIO. 



iimm^Himiy OF CONGRESS 



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